These recipes sound good - except for the liver. I'm not a liver person either, except maybe chicken livers made into paté.
I've been cooking a lot lately, we now have to stop cooking and eat our way through the freezer. Because it's summer, we eat a lot of curries. I generally make my own curry powder or simply throw in various spices. However, husband wanted a break from curries so I made veal osso bucco last night. I forgot to add the gremolata to it before serving, so I added a little tonight to my serve - it just makes it! I currently eat small servies of it, with brown rice (because of my diet).
Veal osso bucco - I begin with a sofrito of chopped onion, garlic and carrot, all reduced together (I also use celery but had run out). Then I put that in the large pot and next do the osso bucco pieces. I put seasoned flour into a plastic shopping bag (one with no holes) and throw the meat in, inflate the bag and toss the meat around. I then brown each piece of meat, putting it on top of the cooked vegetable mix with a generous handful of freshly picked bay leaves.
Next step - brown some more of the seasoned flour (whatever is left) then add a tin of chopped tomatoes to deglaze the pan. I also use white wine and maybe a bit of extra liquid to rinse out the tomato tin. Next - fresh herbs. Thyme, basil (lots of it) and maybe a big sprig of fresh tarragon, all chopped up and trown in the pot with the deglazed pan contents. Then I simmer it on a very low heat 9either in the oven or on a very low heat on the stove) so that the liquid surface is barely moving. About two to three hours of this and the meat is sitll moist, but tender.
Sprinkle over some gremolata (equal amounts of chopped garlic, parsley and lemon zest) and serve on rice.
If you put leftovers in the fridge, this tastes even better next day.
A couple of variations - the best part of this is supposed to be the marrow in the bone (it's a ring of bone in the middle of each piece). But my family don't like it, although having it in the dish makes the flavour really creamy. So I manually remove each bone and use a skewer to scoop out the marrow and mix it into the sauce.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 didn't like finding vegetable "bits" in her dinner, so at the point where I add the sauce to the meat and vegetables, I would leave the meat pieces aside (on the inside of the lid, upside down) and then use a stick blender to puree the contents of the pot - the tomato pieces, the liquid, the vegetables, the herbs. Then when it is smooth I'd add the meat pieces and let it all simmer for several hours.
It's a great recipe, one of my favourites for impressing people.
Someone mentioned Australian wine - we do have some good ones. Haven't heard of Little Penguin (or whatever). Not that it means anything.
Aussie wines used to be horrible, especially the rotgut we foisted on the rest of the world back in the 70s. The Poms used to call our wines Kanga-Rouge and Bondi Bleach. With good reason.
Not these days, though.
Tomorrow I"m hoping to roast a chicken galantine. I've already taken out the rib cage of the chook (through the neck) and prepared a stuffing. Tomorrow I pack the stuffing back in, shape it to look like a normal chicken, carefully stitch up the large hole I accidentally made in the skin of the breast, then roast the bird as usual. It's supposed to cook in one large whole, but when you carve it you only need to slice it as if you're slicing a load of bread (except it still has drumsticks and wings attached). I was hoping to take it with us to Newcastle for the weekend, maybe a picnic with the kids on Saturday, but I think it's just getting a bit too hard.
Or I'll prepare the bird and freeze it uncooked. I'm still not sure.
Marg